Research background: SMEs' concern for the digital literacy of their workforce, their interest in increasing digital literacy among employees, and securing their digital platforms, have been major issues in their digital transformation process. To reduce those obstacles, the dynamic capabilities of SMEs included in the Resource-based View (RBV) might be an effective solution since they help companies be more competitive and proactive against the threats they face in the digitalization process. Purpose of the article: This research aims to investigate whether SMEs' dynamic capabilities positively contribute to their digital transformation process. Methods: In line with the proposed relationships, this paper analyzes SMEs from Czechia by running Ordinal Logistic Regression analyses. The research sample is created by stratified random sampling and purposive sampling methods. The research data is collected via telephone surveys. Findings & value added: This research does not find a positive relationship between the dynamic capabilities of SMEs and the digital transformation process. While the results related to digital literacy are negatively associated with digital transformation, no significant relationship exists between security actions and the digital transformation of SMEs. This paper extends the scope of RBV on the digital transformation of SMEs by analyzing various dynamic capabilities of SMEs that have not been included in a sole study. Moreover, the perceptions of SME executives are considered by this research to provide effective solutions for the problems they face in digital transformation. Having a joint venture agreement with well-experienced IT companies, having a network with partner firms, looking for funding opportunities in the EU, participating in some practical training, and providing internships for bachelor students might enable SMEs to hit their targets in digital transformation.

Digital literacy of the workforce, firms' digital literacy activities for their employees, and firms' stages in the digitalization process are some of the major concerns of SMEs in their digitalization process. Firms that take effective actions for those issues can reduce their concerns in their digital transformation. However, SMEs' digital transformation and digital literacy activities might differ depending on firm-level characteristics. This paper investigates whether SMEs' dynamic capabilities differ depending on their firm-level characteristics, such as firm size and sector. This paper considers digital transformation, digital literacy of workers, and digital literacy activities of SMEs as dynamic capabilities since those activities are included and identified in Resource-Based View (RBV) as dynamic capabilities. The research team employs a telephone survey to collect data. Moreover, the researchers apply purposive sampling techniques to generate research samples. The researchers perform Chi-square test and ANOVA analyses to investigate the differences in 330 small-large, manufacturing, and service SMEs' dynamic capabilities. According to the results, while the digital transformation stages of SMEs do not differ depending on their sector and size, there are significant differences between the digital literacy activities of small-large and manufacturing-service SMEs. They indicate similarities regarding concerns of small-large SMEs for their workers' digital literacy. However, compared to manufacturing SMEs, service firms indicate greater interest in their workers' digital literacy. Country-specific, firm-specific, sector-specific, and executive-specific factors, including market structure, level of financial assets, close interactions with customers, education level, and responsibilities of firm executives, respectively, might explain those results.

Research background: The lack of financial resources of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) make them face high financial risk. Their entrepreneurial abilities that belong to Resource-based View (RBV), such as innovativeness and competitiveness, might reduce SMEs? financial risk because those entrepreneurial abilities increase the financial performance of businesses. Purpose of the article: This paper aims to investigate the effects of the innovativeness and competitiveness of SMEs on their financial concerns based on financial risk, including bankruptcy, financial performance, and financial risk management. Methods: The authors use a method of data analysis and synthesis, including advanced knowledge and digital processing of background studies. This paper examines 1221 SMEs from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. Those firms are chosen by random sampling method from Cribis and the Budapest Chamber of Commerce databases. Then the researchers directed an online questionnaire to collect the research data from the randomly selected firms. The researchers use Ordinal Logistic Regression Test for analysis purposes. Findings & value added: This paper's results indicate that SMEs' competitiveness does not impact SMEs? bankruptcy prediction, financial performance, or financial risk management. On the other hand, while more innovative SMEs are less likely to face bankruptcy issues than less innovative SMEs, less innovative SMEs indicate better financial performance than their more innovative counterparts. Since this paper focuses on the influences of intangible assets of SMEs (such as characteristics based on RBV and Entrepreneurial Orientation) on their tangible assets (financial performance etc.) and puts emphasis on this fact from an International perspective, this paper makes a significant contribution to the literature. Furthermore, analyzing multiple relationships between SMEs? different entrepreneurial characteristics and various financial risk concerns is another important fact that might draw prospective readers? attention.

Research background: Comparing to larger businesses, SMEs encounter more problems in their operations. Since innovativeness enables SMEs to be more competitive against their rivals, having more innovative activities might make SMEs overcome these issues. Nevertheless, depending on businesses-founders/owners' characteristics, SMEs' innovativeness in organizational, local, and global extents might differ. Purpose of the article: This research explores differences in family-owned SMEs' innovativeness regarding the age of their founders/entrepreneurs, legal form, and succession of these businesses. Methods: The researchers used a questionnaire survey. Data collection process was completed in 2020. The research sample includes 343 family-owned SMEs that operate in Czechia. The normality test result directs the authors to perform an Independent sample T-test to find differences between selected variables. Findings & value added: According to the obtained results, global innovativeness does not differ depending on firms-owners/entrepreneurs' characteristics. However, limited liability firms perform better in local innovativeness than other firms structured in different legal forms. Moreover, the organizational innovativeness of SMEs with successors is greater than firms without successors. While organizational innovativeness does not differ depending on entrepreneurs/founders' age and legal structure of businesses, local innovativeness does not differ depending on entrepreneurs/founders' age and successors' existence in these businesses. The educational level of entrepreneurs/founders, sector, and SMEs' location might be reasons for similarities and differences between SMEs' innovativeness. From the policy perspective, based on the obtained results, the authors suggest creating industrial zones. Furthermore, policymakers' collaborations with other essential players in the market might stimulate innovative attitudes among businesses. This paper's main contribution to the existing literature is to fill the gap regarding organizational, local, and global innovativeness of family-owned SMEs by providing detailed and empirical results about entrepreneurs' and firms' characteristics. Thus, this paper might draw businesses, policymakers, academicians, and international readers' attention concerning family-owned SMEs' innovativeness.

Research background: Export activities are crucial for SMEs' growth and income since they enable businesses to expand abroad. However, SMEs encounter some export impediments, including legislative, tax-related, and cultural-linguistic differences, which increase their export risk. Moreover, since different legislative, tax-related, and cultural conditions affect SMEs' export activities, SMEs' perceptions regarding export obstacles might also differ. Purpose of the article: This paper aims to determine whether the SMEs' perceptions of export barriers in selected Visegrad countries differ. Methods: The researchers employ a random sampling method to create the research sample and create an Internet-mediated questionnaire to collect the re-search data, including 408 SMEs from the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. The researchers ran ANOVA analyses with the Gabriel Post Hoc test to find differences between those SMEs. Findings & value added: The results reveal that the perceptions of Czech and Slovak SMEs differ regarding legislative and tax-related export barriers. On the other hand, the perceptions of SMEs from various countries do not differ concerning cultural-linguistic export barriers. Unfortunately, there is a lack of studies comparing the perceptions of SMEs from Visegrad countries regarding legislative, tax-related, and cultural barriers. Thus, evaluating this topic from an international perspective brings novel findings and fills this research gap. Therefore, policymakers, SMEs, governments, public institutions, and academicians might gain benefits from the results of this unique research.

Research background: Due to having lack of financial power and low amount of revenues, most of SMEs? major concerns are bankruptcy and low financial performance. Those issues are risky situations for SMEs when making for their exporting activities. Therefore, depending on their performance and bankruptcy risk, they might more intensively perceive export barriers and this fact might determine their export decisions. Purpose of the article: This paper examines whether financial performance and bankruptcy concerns of SMEs affect their perceptions of export obstacles or not. Methods: This research performs random sampling method and directs an internet-mediated questionnaire to the selected respondents who are the executives of 408 Czech, Slovakian and Hungarian SMEs. To examine the influences of firm performance and bankruptcy on the perceptions of export impediments by SMEs, this paper employs Ordinal Logistic Regression Test. Findings & value added: The results show that SMEs having less healthy financial conditions less intensively perceive cultural-linguistic export barriers in comparison with SMEs having better financial performance. Moreover, firm performance is not a predictor variable in the perceptions of export costs, legislative and tax-related barriers by SMEs. On the other hand, while SMEs having more bankruptcy concerns more intensively perceive tax-related and cultural-linguistic barriers, bankruptcy concerns of SMEs do not influence their perceptions of export costs and legislative differences. Although many studies have investigated the impacts of financial conditions of SMEs on their internationalization and exporting decisions, they are isolated with only a market or only with a financial issue. The limited extents of those studies cause a partial investigation of export and financial issues of SMEs and make readers having a narrow perspective in this specific area. By focusing on various export obstacles and financial issues that SMEs face in different markets, this research offers a detailed understanding of SMEs? perceptions regarding their financial conditions and export barriers, from a comprehensive perspective. In this regard, this is the research gap that this paper aims to fill.